


never enough daylight

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [111]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: A soft good fic...right?, Gen, Memories, Missing Scenes, Mithrim, Read pre-Chapter 10 of Within The Hollow Crown, title from a John Rodriguez poem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-20 02:36:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19984657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: Maedhros and his brothers are--many things.





	1. Caranthir

“How shall you mend it?” Maedhros asks.

“I don’t think I can,” Maglor answers glumly. He has the pieces of his clairséach in his hands, and Caranthir could swear his lip is trembling like a child’s. Maglor can kill a man, can ride out into darkness with his head held high—

And can be as soft as a fretful woman sometimes.

“If I was any hand at woodworking...” Maedhros says, before his voice trails off. He is sitting cross-legged on the floor of their room, his and Maglor’s. Athair convinced Rumil to give them a few small chambers: two, to be exact. They were once storage rooms beside the larger one that is now Athair’s.

Athair’s and Curufin’s, most nights, since they work in the forge and mine until the wee hours.

Maglor did not ask for another opinion, but Caranthir has one. He snorts. “Galway said he’d try.”

Maglor purses his mouth, as if Caranthir’s presence annoys him. Likely it does, but since it was Maedhros who invited him here, under the pretense of cleaning the family guns, Maglor cannot send him away again.

Such is the power of Maedhros. Caranthir stifles a sigh.

“I know what Galway said. It’s just that I can’t trust anyone to do it properly.” Maglor puts the sorry splintered pieces back in their place, rolled in the tattered Mother-quilt that used to be Celegorm’s. Celegorm must have been like to throw that quilt away, otherwise he wouldn’t have given it to Maglor.

“Perhaps Athair, now that we are settled,” Maedhros offers, but does not pursue the subject further, since Maglor has stowed the harp. He picks up Amrod’s pistol. “Caranthir, the grease? You’d think he used dirt for bullets, the barrel’s right clotted.”

As if summoned, the door bursts open and the Ambarussa tumble in. They smell like fish.

“We caught ten!” Amrod announces proudly. “Crackers, the trout were biting!”

“Celegorm caught ‘em, mostly.” Amras follows his twin’s example and flocks to Maedhros, slipping in between Caranthir and the guns to do so. Maedhros stretches his legs out in front of him, to make more room, and a little knot in Caranthir’s chest tightens or loosens. He doesn’t quite know which.

“You’re in the way,” Maglor protests to the twins, as if he worries about the care and keeping of guns. He’s been doing nothing for half an hour, just moping over his harp.

“No matter,” Maedhros says quickly. “Will we be having fish for dinner, then?”

The twins groan collectively. “Celegorm said we had to help scale them.”

“You did that on the road.” Maedhros points out. “You know how.”

“Yes, but…” Amras smirks. “There was nowhere to run, on the road.”

Caranthir is happy to see their faces bright with color, even laughter. None of them laugh very often these days. The skirmishes keep them too close to forget, although Caranthir is often left behind with the twins.

He wouldn’t say he _envies_ Curufin for going. Indeed, when the guns are laid out like this, who can tell which are brought to battle and which burst harmless holes in bags of sand or soil?

The fish are forgotten. The twins are examining the finished guns, clucking over Maedhros’s work (which is perfect) and utterly ignoring Caranthir.

They are also utterly ignoring Maglor, which is rather more amusing.

“The vultures are bigger than eagles here,” Amrod says abruptly. They were not talking of birds. He takes his gun from Maedhros and starts to clean it himself, likely to show he can. Amras follows suit.

It doesn’t seem to matter, Caranthir thinks for the thousandth time, that Amras is slightly the elder.

“Condors,” Amras corrects. “They’re called condors.”

“Celegorm doesn’t like ‘em.” Amrod frowns.

 _Because they pick over the dead_ , Caranthir doesn’t say. He knows that that is what Amrod is thinking. They’ve seen—well, they’ve seen everything.

The door swings open.

“You little fuckers,” Celegorm growls. “Here you are.”

“Seeking protection,” Maglor mutters, and he and Celegorm exchange a unified glare for once.

“Go on, you two.” Maedhros speaks with his own quiet authority, and the twins scramble to their feet. They are getting very tall. Caranthir tries to imagine three red-haired brothers towering over him, and cannot quite manage it. Maedhros will always be tallest, and the twins will always be—small.

Caranthir lacks imagination. He shakes his head to himself, and picks up the last of the guns: Athair’s second side-piece. He oughtn’t clean it, perhaps; he won’t do it as properly as Maedhros would, and then Athair will chide him for it.

Caranthir begins on it anyway.

“Leaving me with a brace of trout,” Celegorm complains, like he can’t merrily butcher a deer with brutal speed. Celegorm is tall, too, but Caranthir does not admire him in the same way. He smells more like fish than the twins do—yes, those look like bits of fish-guts drying on his hands. His tawny hair is spilling, wild and matted, down his shoulders.

“You look like an ogre.” Even now, Maglor finds it in himself to be prim.

“Sure I do. Hey, Maitimo, you have a bit of string? Need to tie this lot back.”

“Or cut it off.” Maglor again.

“Says Lord fuckin’ Byron.”

“I’ve a string,” Maedhros agrees. He stands up. “Here, keep your hands out of it. I’ll do it.”

There is gun grease on Maedhros’s hands, but Celegorm won’t mind that. Celegorm has not a care for filth, only for convenience. And yet he is grander than Caranthir—loved by Maedhros, which is the same as victory, and admired by Curufin, which is something else. Caranthir is the forgotten brother, even in Mithrim, when Athair says they need to have every ally they can.

Maedhros is the only one who never forgets him, because Maedhros never forgets anyone.

And so, softened, Caranthir remembers the image long afterwards: Maedhros’s hands carding gently through tangled gold, and Celegorm looking much like Huan does when his shaggy head is stroked.


	2. Amras

Mithrim has no priest, which Caranthir has complained of and Maglor has looked rather guilty over, but which otherwise no one has noticed save the twins.

They are barely Catholics now, Amras supposes. A strange fate for an army of altar boys, but there it is. He thought of it at Christmas and he thinks of it all the more during Eastertide, when there is no Paschal feast—only an ordinary one. The candied oranges and spiced potatoes and rice custard are all bountiful and delicious, but Amras does not particularly care for the wild boar.

(Mother used to—)

“I’ll have yours if you don’t want it,” Amrod offers, nudging his elbow. Amras scowls and shovels down another forkful. They are only two inches shy of Caranthir in height. In March, Maedhros measured them against the door of their room. Amrod believes he shall be the taller if he eats more heartily.

Amras won’t give him that chance.

(Mother used to make a ham studded with cloves, brined in maple syrup. _Not a proper brine_ , Athair was wont to say, but he devoured many slices of it anyway. Athair was of greater help when it came time for the dyeing of eggs—he was not constrained by the trials of weak beet juice or oak-stain. Athair’s concoctions were the talk of the parish round.)

After supper, the plates are cleared away. One of the men has a deck of cards, and there is a little talk, a little boasting laughter, and then a poker game begins.

Amras and Amrod stay to watch, for Maedhros has taken Athair’s seat, at Athair’s bidding, and now reigns over the table like a king.

“He’ll clean the lot of you out,” Athair says proudly. He stands behind Maedhros with his hands crowning Maedhros’s broad shoulders. Athair does not play cards; he claims they bore him. He does not seem bored now.

“I’ll try my luck,” a black-bearded man proposes, flashing a grin. “Expecting to be tanned.”

A cheer goes up, _Ulfang, Ulfang_ , for that must be his name. Not all of the men in the fort like Athair, Amras believes—but Rumil is _their_ Athair and they do not defy him.

“You draw?” Maedhros asks, and Ulfang nods.

“Crowley here used to work riverboats up, down the Mississippi. He learned us every rule there is.”

Maedhros plays with a little smile on his face. It is not a frozen smile, not a limp, dead thing. It quirks, it flares to white-teeth brightness when he wins. And he _does_ win, even as Ulfang chivies him, even as the bystanders try to sneak glances at his cards. Maedhros keeps them fanned down, looking at them only once (when they are dealt) and otherwise playing with his expressions alone.

Maglor calls it bluffing.

Celegorm calls it _damn good_.

Poker is followed by blackjack, and Maedhros’s luck turns a little, or seems to. But since he waves away everyone else’s penalties, no one accepts payment of any of his.

“You’re a right good sport, you are,” Ulfang says admiringly, when Maedhros has claimed the heap of winnings once again, only to share it out among its previous owners.

In a corner, Rumil smiles.

Maedhros shakes hands.

“Pleasure to play,” he says. “You’re a worthy opponent.”

Someone takes up a fiddle soon after, and there is dancing. Not dancing like the ceilis of old; this is rowdier. Athair does not participate; he nods to Curufin and they make for the forge. The rest of his family scattering, Amras frowns. He does not want to see Maglor, in particular, looking very watery about _someone else’s_ music. He does not want to see Celegorm glowering beside Huan. Instead, he slips outside. It is not a raid night; Athair said they might sleep soundly after the feast.

Easter. The solemnity of it, the pressed collars and heavy incense and light lilies—far, far away.

Amras breathes in through his nose. He can smell the fresh spring scent of the lake, even in the dark. Can imagine its blue-black surface. With the door drawn shut behind him, he can crowd out the thump of feet and the shriek of the fiddle.

Even Amrod is not with him, here. But for the sentries’ orange torches winking afar, it is only Amras and the night air.

“I hope someone brought them some pork,” comes Maedhros’s voice, from the shadow of Mithrim’s eaves.

Amras starts. “Maitimo?”

“The sentries. They must be hungry.”

“Guess so,” Amras says. He hadn’t seen Maedhros go out. “Aren’t you going to dance?”

“No.” Maedhros says nothing more until he strides up beside Amras, turning his back to the door. The way his long coat swings behind him is almost like wings. Amras breathes in the scent of leather and whiskey and soap. Then Maedhros adds, “My hands did the dancing tonight.”

“You played really well.”

“P’shaw.”

“Would you teach me?” In his mind’s eye, Amras can almost imagine himself flitting through sharp-edged cards.

“Sure you want to know how?”

Amras thinks of Athair crowing with his always-pride, of Maedhros and his smile, of the way that the tension in the room eased as Maedhros played the men down and then played himself down. 

Amras considers. “Maybe. Amrod and I know a few games already.”

“Maglor and I probably invented ‘em.” Maedhros wraps his arms around himself as if he is cold. It isn’t cold out. Amras feels warm. Good.

“Probably,” he says.

“Here,” Maedhros says, and dropping his arm, he fishes in his pocket before he comes out with a square that glows white in the dark. “Ulfang’s ace.”

“You cheated?” Amras asks breathlessly.

Maedhros laughs, low. “No, bairn. I just wanted him to know I could. I took it when we were shaking hands.”

Amras is, curiously enough, relieved. He stares up at stars that are whiter than the card in his fingers.  
“I’m not a bairn,” he remembers to complain at last.

“Mm,” Maedhros hums. “Don’t I know it.”


	3. Curufin

“Almost ready,” Athair murmurs. “Get Maedhros.”

This is the great vexation of Curufin’s existence, all the more so because he cannot call it such, cannot give it the heft and weight of a stumbling block. Athair must never know.

Curufin is long beyond pouring bullets; could turn the cylinder of a barrel in his sleep. What he delights in—what he _understands_ , now, is the careful, pliant construction of the pins and plates and chambers, all made from the molds Athair carved, leaning over the bench and letting Curufin watch his every move.

This is harmony, and a union of minds: one teaching, one learning. But whenever Athair has made a new discovery, he calls Maedhros.

Curufin won’t fight with Athair. He’ll never fight with Athair. Can’t, here, when there’s so much to win and so much to lose, when they ride into the night like men untouchable and yet also like men who are never coming back. Athair _needs_ an ally who won’t question him, a son who can carry whatever burdens he proffers—and that son will never be Maedhros.

Curufin shuffles across the rolling land of Mithrim just quickly enough that Athair cannot chide him for it, and slowly enough that the inevitable must wait its turn a while longer. He passes the stables, passes the low wall, his stride dipping with the ground until he comes to where the river-moat fed by the lake maps the boundaries of their stronghold.

Maedhros is, predictably, with a woman. Curufin sees the pair of them at the mouth of the slender bridge, ostensibly on sentry duty, but more likely wasting time. They are close together, which makes them a useless pair of sentries.

Maedhros has his shoulders thrown back and his hair blowing in his face. The woman—her name is Nora, and Curufin dislikes her with the same flat-metal dislike he offers to all in Mithrim who are not _his_ —moves around Maedhros as if she is keenly aware of the air between them, and how he fills it.

Curufin narrows his eyes.

“Maedhros!”

Maedhros turns. He does not look ashamed, to be caught loitering. Curufin _has_ the power to drag that out of him, and sometimes he does, but there are no stakes at the moment, no desert thunder, no seeping blood. Therefore, Maedhros can stand with this woman almost between his knees and call it _keeping_ _watch_.

“Athair thought you might come in,” he says haltingly. That is not exactly what Athair conveyed, but Curufin will not say, _he needs you._

“Alright.” Maedhros smiles at Nora, so quick and fleeting that Curufin hasn’t time to read the truth of it. Nora, in turn, whistles for Homer, who is stumping about the grounds with nothing to do—but when has Homer _ever_ anything to do?

“He’ll finish your shift, I know it,” Nora says to Maedhros. She barely glances at Curufin. Curufin likes _that_ less than he likes her. She’s not half-bad to look at, despite the tangle of sandy hair that is too fox-red to be Celegorm’s and too pale to be anything like Maedhros’s or the twins’.

Nora wears her bodices low and snug, which must be what Maedhros sees in _her_.

Curufin frowns.

“All well with Athair?”

“Of course.” Curufin is always snappish with Maedhros. Has to be; Maedhros looks after them better than when he’s nervous, on edge.

(Curufin used to bite when he was small.)

Maedhros tries again. “Guns today?”

“As usual.”

The sun is coin tossed up too high and fixed in place. Curufin has never had the patience to watch it move, to measure the time of day by angles of light. If he has patience, it is Athair’s patience: the ruthless pursuit of perfection. Everything else slips through his hands like sand.

“I’m glad he has you to depend on,” Maedhros says softly. They are halfway back to the fort, where it crouches low like something waiting.

“Hmm?”

“Athair. You.” Maedhros’s smile is strained, as it wasn’t for Nora, but does that mean it is more or less real? “You understand him better than any of us, Curvo.”

Curufin has to catch his breath a little. An ill-timed swallow, perhaps; he coughs. “Athair has much to do,” he answers stiffly. “Much to accomplish.”

“I know that,” Maedhros agrees, ducking his head. “I imagine it is a great comfort, to have you at his side in a forge.”

 _Because he misses Formenos_ , is the implication of _that_ , and Curufin bristles.

“Thank you,” he says stiffly. “What an honor.”

They are quiet the rest of the way.

Is Curufin sorry, when an hour passes and Maedhros is still near-silent? They work side by side, under heavy leather aprons. Maedhros has tied his hair high on his head with a rather efficient contraption of leather lace and unused awl.

Athair has filled the space of words for both of them. Eagerly, he has shown Maedhros how the chambers will turn more smoothly now, how the bullets need not only be those of his old make. “I have accounted for their lightness,” he explains. “Not that they shall be as light as all this—this is merely a model. We can have greater velocity, and with force, this hollow point will cause greater devastation. One bullet will do the work of ten.”

Does Maedhros _understand_ Athair’s genius?

Does he know where it will take them?

“This is impressive work, Athair,” Maedhros says. “Will the make be traceable?”

Athair scoffs. Curufin’s heart is pounding in his ears. “I do not think so,” Athair says. “Or if it is, let others try! I have managed this in a matter of weeks, though in truth, the idea of it has long been on my mind.”

The forge feels dense and close to most, Curufin expects, but he never minds it.

“Then let us have at it,” Maedhros suggests. They fall to work together.

Curufin breathes, and does not mind so much that Maedhros, too, is needed.

He’ll make more bullets, anyway.


	4. Amrod

The mud sucks at Amrod’s boots. Gingerly, he pulls one foot out, since mud cakes hard to leather and Mother—

He forgets this, but not her. He forgets that she is not here, and remembers every one of her rules.

“Come summertime,” one of Mithrim’s men said to him yesterday—a younger man, called Crowley, who has a thatch of hair yellower than Celegorm’s—“That lake’s fine fit for swimming.”

Formenos had better swimming holes, even if they were smaller. Amrod frowns, and tracks mud up the grass, scraping it from his soles. He sees Maedhros at the top of the hill before the fort, sitting with his hands on his knees. Caranthir is with him.

Amrod will join them. Caranthir probably won’t say anything about ruined boots, and Maedhros certainly won’t.

There’s no use in being scolded, these days, and his boots aren’t truly ruined.

“What are you doing?” Amrod asks.

“Watching butterflies,” Caranthir says.

“Really?”

“What are _you_ doing? Mud all over you.”

There’s a point against Caranthir, but Maedhros is smiling. “Sit down, Ambarussa. We really are watching for butterflies. Celegorm says there are swallowtails passing. He saw a few yesterday.”

“He’s out hunting now,” Caranthir says gloomily, watching the sky. “With Curufin.” He flops down on his stomach beside Maedhros. Amrod sits.

“I wonder what flight would be like,” he says. The sky is the sort of blue Mother used to call _Mary’s Mantle_. He wonders what the weather is back east. They used to be able to guess (mostly) whether Maedhros and Maglor shared the same in the city, with Formenos.

They are now too far away.

“Terribly exciting,” Maedhros murmurs. “Why, you want to?”

“If I could fly, I’d do it so fast that I would go thousands of miles in just a day,” Amrod says.

Caranthir sighs.

Maedhros isn’t wearing his coat, it’s so warm out. April and golden. Amrod sees the threads springing up like grass from the worn knee of Maedhros’s trouser leg.

“Athair thinks that someone will invent flying machines one day,” Maedhros says, tucking his hair behind his ears. “Not just balloons or gliding mechanisms. Something that one can propel and direct. They spoke of that sort of thing as far back as Da Vinci’s days.”

Maybe it is because Maedhros was educated in the city. Maybe it is because Maedhros is Maedhros, sharp as the head of Curufin’s newly fletched arrows, but kind. Kind as summer.

It is going to be summer here, soon.

“Enough talk of flying,” Caranthir mutters. “Athair will overhear you, and then—”

“Athair only cares about weapons now,” Amrod says. He sees Maedhros fall into that solemn stillness that has shrouded him since—since a long time ago, now, and regrets his words. He plucks at a tuft of grass, and seeks another subject. “You called me Ambarussa before,” he says at last. “Bet you didn’t know which one I was, at first.”

It’s an old joke, because Maedhros always knows.

“I’m not permitted to forget,” Maedhros says, with a hint of his old teasing grin. “Not since you’re my—godson.” He stumbles over _that_ word, but only a little, and Amrod feels the mood lift. A success. He isn’t a blundering idiot like Curufin says. He isn’t a little fool, as Celegorm sometimes suggests. He knows when things are amiss, and he may be the youngest, but he can do his part to fix them.

They sit in silence for a while. The sun is like an orange. If squeezed, the light from it would fall in sweet droplets, turning the lake warm and bright.

Amrod wants Formenos, but he will not say so. He has regretted his words once already, today. He has felt their sting, by seeing it on Maedhros’s face.

It is one week short of Maedhros’s twenty-fourth birthday. Amrod won’t say that, either.

“I know,” Maedhros says quietly, to both of them, “That it is not a matter of being strictly happy here. But you—”

“Maitimo,” Caranthir interrupts firmly. “Don’t worry yourself.”

“I am not worried.” Maedhros laces his fingers together. There are gunpowder burns on his knuckles.

“Look!” Amrod cries. “A swallowtail!”

It is almost as broad as Amrod’s palm. There are sun-bright spots on its hindwings, centered with black specks like the pupils of eyes. The rest of its wings are paler yellow, starkly outlined.

“Caranthir and I have been sitting out for such a long time,” Maedhros tells him, amused. “And you sight our quarry at once. Perhaps we should leave the creatures to Celegorm—and to you.”

“I would have seen it in another moment,” Caranthir grumbles, but he isn’t really vexed, for he sees his own swallowtail next, and then another, and then Maedhros counts three more—it is a little flock of them, drifting on the breeze.

_Going home, or finding one._

Amrod is not a child any longer. It is true that he cannot forget Mother, true that he always wants to stay close by Maedhros, true that he wishes Athair would cease to lead Maedhros and Maglor and Celegorm and Curufin with torches into the dark. But he is not a child, and he sits upright, with his hands dangling over his knees like Maedhros does. Alone, without his twin, he does not feel so small. Maybe he does not always need his other half, to be seen in the world.

 _No, no_. It would hurt Amras to hear that thought, and it hurts Amrod to hold it in his mind for more than a moment.

Must everything hurt, when said aloud?

“Will there be more butterflies passing through in summer?” Amrod asks.

Caranthir nods. “Celegorm says so. He read a book on butterflies of the Americas, once. There are many species out here.”

Amrod looks at Maedhros out of the corner of his eye. He will remember this moment always, how Maedhros is aglow with the sun.

“We will watch for them, too,” Amrod says.

One by one, they smile.


	5. Maglor

There is only a single candle in the room, and Maglor has hoarded it, hovering over one of Mithrim’s few books until a spot of wax lands on the page before him, pearling in an accusing bead.

Frantically, he scrubs at it with a fingertip. This only makes it worse, of course, _and_ it reminds him of his old diaries at Formenos and Valinor Park.

Maglor has not kept a diary since. He sniffs and shuts the book, hard.

“Easy there,” Maedhros says. He is lying on his bedroll, flat on his back. One knee is crooked up so the other can slant across it. He has one hand palmed flat against his chest and one twining in his hair.

Maedhros toys with his hair when he is thinking, and bites his lip when he is worried. He is always moving, always reaching. Touching, when he can. Maglor can dimly remember being three or four years old, and sleeping with Maedhros’s arms around him, Maedhros’s small hands rubbing his back. Even then, Maglor knew that it comforted Maedhros as much as it did him.

“I am tired of this unschooled place,” Maglor sighs. “Half of these men don’t know their letters, and it's no wonder. This book is the dullest I have ever seen.”

“I shouldn’t say _half_ ,” Maedhros muses, his voice mild. “Some of them studied for years. Phillips was nearly a lawyer.”

“Who is Phillips?” Maglor asks, piqued.

Maedhros’s lips curve in gentle, open-mouthed amusement. He looks up at Maglor through his eyelashes. “Phillips is the man who sat between us at dinner.”

“Rude fellow. Took my seat.”

“Don’t think he ‘did it to purpose,’ _cano_ , as Caranthir used to say. Anyway, he’s one of Rumil’s most trusted and frequent sentries. A little prickly, but we get on.”

“You get on?” Maglor hangs his head, dejected. “Confound it all, Maitimo, _how_ do you manage to remember all these names and faces? We’ve been here three months and they might as well be all one face and name, to me.”

Maedhros sits up. His head is not as high as Maglor’s, because Maglor is sitting on the only chair—more a rough stool than anything—but with his chin tilted up, Maedhros meets Maglor’s eyes.

“You none of you like other people very much,” he says softly. “Celegorm would rather be running with wolves. Curufin speaks to metal. Even the twins...they want _us_. No one else.”

Maglor thinks, _When I had music, everything was different_ , but he will weep if he says that aloud.  
Because it is Maedhros, he does not need to. Maedhros’s face twists with sympathy, an expression painfully close to their mother’s.

Maglor can remember her when she was the age Maedhros is now, and it stings him to the core of his heart.

“I will draw you a map of people,” Maedhros offers. “Laid like the tributaries of rivers, with Athair at the head of one and Rumil the other.”

“And you in the middle?”

“What?”

“Like a—” Maglor remembers, too late, and forges ahead because there is no other word. “A bridge.”

The softly crooked line of Maedhros’s smile tells him he shall not be chided for the slip. “We all have to be useful, Maglor.” It is an old argument.

Maglor stands, moves towards his bedroll, and begins to undress for the night. At that moment, the door swings open.

Maglor makes a sound too much like a yelp for his own dignity.

“Jesus, you banshee,” Celegorm says. “You have a tighter hold on your modesty than on your—”

“I was _startled_ ,” Maglor snaps. “As anyone would be, when their visitors do not _knock_.”

Celegorm looks at him in disgust, likely because the title of _visitor_ has driven up his hackles. It was Maglor who told Celegorm he might not share this room, when sleeping quarters were being divided.

“And you might have been a very tall woman,” Maedhros interjects smoothly. “In the dark.”

Celegorm snorts. “No women are knocking down Maglor’s door, I’d say.”

“It isn’t just _my_ door,” Maglor returns, heated, then bites his tongue.

Maedhros does not appear to be offended, though of course it is not always possible to tell. “Oh, I go to them,” he assures them both, his tone light. “And I _always_ knock, for modesty’s sake.”

Celegorm laughs, peace is restored, and Maglor finishes dressing in his nightclothes. It isn’t true, what Maedhros said. Maglor has scarcely seen him flirt, in Mithrim. Certainly, he knows of no late-night visits.

Celegorm sits down beside Maedhros on Maedhros’s bedroll. Maglor stretches out on his, and wishes Celegorm would not ape the role of tag-along little brother, at this advanced age of nineteen. Moments where Maedhros is happy, or close to being so, are few here. Moments when he is just Maglor’s seem fewer still.

“Athair say we’ll go out tonight,” Celegorm says. “Orcs are camping south of here, surveying. We’ll chase ‘em off before they get a chance to finish marking.”

Maglor’s ears thrum with his nervous pulse. Maedhros says,

“Alright then.”

“Can’t we sleep a bit, before then?”

Celegorm shrugs. “Guess so. Curufin said we won’t leave for another two hours.”

Maglor turns on his side. “Curufin’s giving the orders now?”

“Likely just conveying Athair’s.” Maedhros is still in his trousers and suspenders, but without his boots. “Here, Celegorm, I’ll shove over.”

 _He has his own room_ , Maglor thinks, though in truth it isn’t just Celegorm’s, but the twins and Caranthir’s as well. Celegorm, to his credit, hesitates.

“What about you?”

“I slept while Maglor was reading the dullest book in Mithrim. I’ll sit up.”

Maedhros is too good for them. Too good for _himself_ , which is why Maglor worries and nags, why Maglor _must_ worry and nag. Maedhros is like Athair, in that he finds beauty in burning, and not like Athair, in that he chooses no torch but himself.

Maglor sleeps, and Celegorm sleeps, and Maglor dreams that they are far away from Mithrim.


	6. Celegorm

“Stay _still_ , Celegorm,” Maglor hisses, and Celegorm is half enraged because it’s Maglor saying it, half because he really thought—really thought he _was_.

“Fuck, oh _fucking_ hell—what are you _doing_?” Overhead, there is a night sky, blue-black as a huckleberry, and against that sky are the blacker fronds of fir trees. Celegorm badly wants something else to look at.

“Staunching it!”

A thunder of footsteps. Maedhros’s face, lit by a lantern, flashes into view. “How deep, Maglor? How deep is it?”

Celegorm squeezes shut his eyes and his teeth, and somehow manages to wonder if that is _panic_ in Maedhros’s voice.

“It’s just a finger-width,” Maglor answers, in the loudest whisper he can. “Bloody—tell him to stop squirming, Maitimo.”

“Celegorm,” Maedhros says, crouching down by him. Celegorm _isn’t_ squirming, and he _can_ bear the pain perfectly well so long as Maglor keeps his damn dirty hands out of it—

It happened like this: he dodged the bullet. Mostly. It guttered him along his right hip, and it hurts like all hell, though he can keep fighting. He can. He has had worse than this: broken bones at ho—at Formenos, and once a rusted nail through his foot, but _damn_ , his body won’t stop shaking.

“It’s quieted down out there,” Maedhros is saying to Maglor. “Athair and Curufin should be riding back posthaste. Celegorm, there’s a good deal of blood, but Maglor says the wound isn’t deep. Do you hear me? It isn’t deep.”

“I know it’s not. I’m fine. Mags is taking his goddamn _time_ —”

“I’m doing my _best_ ,” Maglor says.

The whole world smells of soot. Or maybe that is just what clings to Celegorm’s skin. He’s tired of riding out. Never tired of fighting, but that doesn’t mean it _helps_.

“Thank you, _cano_. I’ll do it.” Maedhros’s hands replace Maglor’s, deft hands. The wound still stings horribly; that’s the whiskey. Celegorm knew they’d use the whiskey.

He gasps and—

_It might not scar,_ Celegorm says, to a boy who should be a man, a stranger who should be his brother, _If we are careful_.

Maedhros’s arm under his shoulders is very firm. “We’ll stitch it back at the fort,” he says. “Give you something for the pain, then.”

The sky is no lighter.

Celegorm stands with him, regains his step, leans into Maedhros’s strength.

The ride is hell.

“You got a good shot in,” Curufin mutters approvingly, when they dismount under Mithrim’s watchful lights. The place isn’t a home. Isn’t even a safehouse, really. Celegorm would rather be on his belly among the leaves of the forest. Would rather—

But the forests aren’t the same in the west, either. The forests are watchful, bracken-dense and bone-deep, and Celegorm must endure. Must find something else to look at, maybe. He scoffs at himself, and stumbles a step.

A good shot in. A good shot in, through a man’s temple. Men’s eyes are not like the eyes of animals, when they die. Celegorm finds them—blanker. Found this man’s eyes very blank indeed, likely because there was nothing left behind them.

Christ, he hopes Maedhros didn’t see that.

The gates of Mithrim are unlocked for them. There is the usual bustle, a few of Athair’s men and a few of Rumil’s people, and then the slapping sound of the twins’ half-worn boots.

“You’re back, you’re back!”

Caranthir is with them.

“Quiet,” Athair orders. “Inside.”

 _Inside_ means Athair’s room, the one they all shared at first, the one that Curufin stays in, now, most nights. Celegorm is left with Caranthir’s sepulchral snores and the snuffling twins. He pinches his hurt side and follows Curufin, who follows Athair.

“Celegorm,” Amrod says, very low, “What’s the matter?”

“He’s hurt,” Maedhros answers, coming up behind. “Just a little. He will be alright, Ambarussa.”

“Are _you_ hurt, Maitimo?” That is Amras.

“No, I’m not hurt.”

Athair shuts the door behind them. Celegorm wants a dive into clean water—though usually he cares naught about grime on his skin. He wants also to curl on his side, the left side, where his hip is not split open, and sleep the sleep of the dead.

“When we chased them down,” Athair says, satisfied, with his arms folded over his chest, “I saw that they were _afraid_.”

“They should be,” Curufin says eagerly. Curufin is always eager when it comes to Athair. Celegorm can’t remember a time when that wasn’t true, and doesn’t try to. “They should _run_ —”

The room tilts a bit. God, he’s tired.

“Athair,” Maedhros says, hands deep in the pockets of his enviable coat, “Celegorm took a bit of a shot across the bow. Can I see to it?”

Athair blinks at them both, uncomprehending. This is his forge-look, as Celegorm and Maglor used to call it, when they were united in anything.

“Yes, of course,” he says. “Go on. Avoid the healers if you can.”

Maedhros grins with one side of his mouth. “It’s nothing I can’t tend.”

“Would you bar the fucking door so Maglor doesn’t come in and kick— _ow,_ Jesus. Kick me in the head?”

“No one is going to kick you, _cano_.”

Celegorm drags at his hair with his hands as Maedhros dips the needle again, starts the third stitch. “You only call me that when you think I’m in need of coddling.”

Maedhros smiles, soft, quick. His hair is hanging around his face, catching at his lip, but he does not push it away because his hands are busy. “Am I coddling you? I think I’m stitching up a bullet-wound, and you’re taking it like a man.”

 _A good shot in_ —

“Not a bad way to die, right?” Celegorm says, staring fixedly at the ceiling. Maedhros’s bloodstained fingers are efficient, but it still—fucking—hurts—

“What?”

“Not a bad way to go. Bullet to the face. Wouldn’t hurt very long.”

_Die like a hunted thing, die like a trophy, everything ends._

“No.” Maedhros trims the thread, reaches for a bandage. “Don’t suppose it would.”


	7. Feanor

“It's a tremendous shame,” Rumil says, shaking his head, “That we are not able to safely map the mountains north or east of here. That was my hope—for, yes, a freed slave dares hope sooner than you might believe, Feanor.”

“I could believe it easily,” Feanor says. He folds the map-sketch sharply. Three new additions are marked and blotted, but they seem paltry things in light of how many uncharted miles stretch around them in every direction.

It is more than mountains, that they cannot see.

“Our time will come,” Rumil muses. “I wonder if our _times_ , yours and mine, shall come together—when we are able to truly make a change.”

“We have already. What is the date this day?” Feanor asks, for they have a habit of noting it on the back of their thin, sturdy parchments.

“The sixteenth of April,” Rumil answers, and Feanor is man enough to admit that he feels—guilt.

“Maedhros.”

“Athair?” Maedhros is coming from Mithrim’s garden, a basket of fresh greens in his arms. How Rumil’s people manage to coax things to life in the spring months is beyond the ken of ordinary men to understand, but Feanor abandoned mundanity in the East and is slave to no such confusion. The climate is good here, as to sunlight. Water and soil may be artificially maintained.

“Walk with me,” Feanor says, glancing at the greens with distaste. The finer points of horticultural manipulation aside, he wants more for his sons than domestic toil. This is a land of plenty. This is theirs—from sunset gleam to mountain brow.

Maedhros sets the basket at Mithrim’s kitchen stoop.

“Is all well?” He has a way of asking questions, does Feanor’s oldest son, that makes him seem as if he has an answer in mind that his father will dislike.

“Why would anything be _unwell_?”

Maedhros shrugs. “No reason.”

“You seem to be sleeping better,” Feanor says, walking the words out as one might a dog upon a leash. “Of course, not on the nights we venture out, but on the whole, your color is better.”

Maedhros nods. “Yes, sir. We are very comfortable here.”

Feanor hopes that that is so. His sons have grown mysterious, of late. They do not all love the hidden mine as he does, they do not marvel at the raw potential, the agonizing beauty of it. Only Curufin has answered the call of the west as Feanor expected the rest of them to. Only Curufin has felt its siren potency.

Yet Maedhros is to be trusted on the subject of his brothers. Maedhros has a peculiar talent for translating Maglor’s pique and Caranthir’s sullen temper, Celegorm’s obstinacy and the twins’ persistent naivete, and making something hopeful of it.

 _That_ is an eldest raised well. An eldest brought up to love and guide and guard—

 _The sixteenth of April_.

“Maedhros.”

“Athair?”

The same call and response. The same clear grey eyes he had at five, or nine, or seventeen.

Feanor sighs, and in a gesture he knows will be of some comfort—and some aid at breaking the boy out of his endlessly alert watchfulness—he slings an arm around his son’s shoulders.

They are, now, a little broader than his own.

The effect is immediate. Maedhros smiles. It is a line of joy barely visible behind the rich curtain of his hair, but a smile nonetheless.

 _I know what this day is_ , Feanor thinks, but does not say. _Twenty-four years, you have been my son, and twenty-four years I have been better for it._

“I have almost perfected the throwing explosives we discussed those weeks ago,” he confides instead. “They will be enough not only to skirmish, not only to distract—but also, we shall be able to destroy what they have _made_ in double-time, with half the effort.”

This, too, does not make Maedhros happy enough.

“What do you make of the explosives—”

“That you saw in the mountain? Not unprecedented. Impossible to use as a personal weapon, though, or at close distances. The danger would be too great. Whatever those fools think they are building and doing, son, they are sore mistaken. The mountains are stronger than they are.”

Maedhros turns to him a little. He has not shrugged off Feanor’s arm, and once placed there, Feanor feels he ought not remove it just yet. They walk, thus.

“Are you stronger than the mountains, Athair?”

Feanor does not consider long before replying. “It is not a matter of strength, but of wisdom. I am wiser than the mountains, for I do not try to split them in two. A thing divided will never have the strength of what is kept whole.”

Maedhros nods quickly, blinking. “Aye. It is an impossible plan, whoever it is that has it.”

(Perhaps cursed Gothmog, whom Feanor has yet to meet in battle. Gothmog is likelier than that skulking trapper Mairon to be Bauglir’s hands and feet in the west. His position as overseer supports the suspicion, and Feanor can imagine that a fortress or deep-laid track is spawning in the dead face of the rocky crag.

How like Manwe, to want to push west in a straight line.

How like Morgoth, to destroy whatever he can in accomplishing it.

Oh, that progress may ever end! This _false_ progress, which is only a new form of monarchy, which is only—)

“It is you who look a little tired, Athair,” Maedhros is saying softly. “Have you eaten yet?”

“That goat stew we had last night.”

“That was two nights ago.”

Sometimes it hurts too much to look at Maedhros, who is, in smile and glorious crown, so much, so much like—

But if he does not look at Maedhros, how will he look at his other sons? For they come after the first, after the eldest, and Feanor learned best to be a father as he learned best everything else: quickly, and young.

 _Twenty-four years_.

It is, in many ways, so little time.


End file.
